A warm welcome to Discovery’s staff members as they join our Umbrella Fund

As CEO of Discovery Employee Benefits, I am overjoyed to welcome Discovery’s team of more than 10 000 employees as their retirement benefits are transferred to our own Umbrella Fund solution.

Our solutions deliver superior value to staff members

It has always been a core philosophy at Discovery that the products we develop should be so good that we would buy into them ourselves. This philosophy couldn’t be more strongly endorsed than by the decision of Discovery’s board of trustees overseeing the staff’s retirement benefits to move their stand-alone fund to our Umbrella Fund for superior value. This was confirmed by an independent review by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

We use boosts to incentivise good physical and financial health

We took on the monthly contributions from 1 July 2020 and our staff members are enjoying boosts to these monthly contributions, which will amount to over R21 million in the first year. The accumulated fund value from the previous administrator will be transferred to us shortly and will be boosted by more than R300 million. This comes at no extra cost. In fact, our staff will enjoy a 35% reduction in their administration fees, as well as a reduction on the asset management fees of the default investment portfolios.

We use the boosts to encourage employees to adopt behaviours that will improve their physical and financial health. The better the behaviours, the greater the monthly boost.

Our solutions can solve South Africa’s retirement savings crisis

With people living longer and spending almost as much time in retirement as in their working lifetime, the retirement savings crisis in South Africa – which is already well-documented and alarming – is only exacerbated. However, by encouraging members to improve their financial health our boosts are effectively tackling this problem.

Congratulations to the team!

Congratulations to our Employee Benefits teams who have demonstrated that our platform and systems are ready and able to onboard and administer a fund of this size and complexity. It is the culmination of many years of hard work to deliver the first software platform in South Africa to enable staff to engage digitally with their retirement savings. 

I am incredibly excited to be able to join our staff on this wonderful journey to financial freedom and a happy, healthy, retirement.